Nasogastric Tube Design to Reduce Clogging and Simplify Flushing

Ankrum, James A.; Olechowski, Alison; Canseco, José A.; Greenblatt, Elliot; Roberts, Michael P.; Hanumara, Nevan C.; Slocum, Alexander H.

doi:10.1115/1.3589815

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…The lack of guiding literature on the best way to ensure proper function of an NGT for gastric decompression is well recognized [ 6 , 7 ]. Current evidence-based recommendations to prevent aspiration pneumonia include maintaining the head of the bed at 30–45 degrees and ensuring proper NGT placement [ 8 – 10 ], or entirely redesigning the NGT [ 11 , 12 ], but there is little guidance regarding assessing the NGT as the suction device in current widespread use. Evidence-based reviews suggest checking gastric residual volume (GRV) (defined as the volume left in the stomach after flushing an NGT) during gastric feeding [ 10 , 13 , 14 ] but do not specifically address how best to assess GRV, nor how to ensure that the measured GRV is accurate.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A breath of fresh air: a quality-improvement study comparing an air-circulating technique versus conventional technique to prevent nasogastric tube dysfunction

et al. 2015

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BackgroundNasogastric tubes are an important component of care in patients with gastrointestinal obstructions. However, they are prone to malfunction despite conventional flushing techniques, with potentially severe consequences. There is no widely accepted, gold-standard way to ensure that a nasogastric tube succeeds in maintaining an empty stomach following flushing.MethodsWe have developed a flushing technique to better ensure successful tube function. We compared this technique to conventional flushing both in vitro (using a plastic stomach model) and in vivo (in a pig model), and we provide a didactic video.ResultsThe mean gastric residual volume following our novel flushing technique is nearly 25-fold lower than following conventional flushing (13 mL vs. 330 mL).ConclusionsOur simple technique is more effective than conventional techniques in maintaining nasogastric tube function and therefore should prevent dangerous vomiting and aspiration pneumonia better than conventional techniques.

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